


whatever answer that you give (is only going to play into their doubts)

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Mirror Universe, other characters make a background appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 15:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13250994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: The prime universe, even in the middle of a war, isn't so difficult when you've spent a lifetime fighting the Terran Empire at every turn.or, the one where Lorca is from the mirrorverse, and tries to win a war.





	whatever answer that you give (is only going to play into their doubts)

**Author's Note:**

> generally canon compliant, spoilers through the mid season 1 finale, so turn back now if you aren't current.
> 
> i decided to try my own spin on mirrorverse lorca. a mangling of canonical mirrorverses from other trek verses to suit the plotline. 
> 
> super lorca centric.
> 
> the title is a modified dawes song lyric.

This isn’t his home. It looks the same, most days.  He hasn’t had to totally relearn the maps of the universe, although where there have been skirmishes that didn’t take place in his world, things are a bit different.

All Gabriel wants is to go home. He wants to wake up next to Kat again, to hear her soothing voice, the promise that they’re safe.

He doesn’t know if she’s still alive. He hopes, of course, but the second they were ripped away from each other was the end of him knowing. Ripping through to another universe is harrowing; space and time and dimensions tearing through skin and mind.

When he lands, in _Federation_ space, not the Terran empire, Gabriel feels guilty for the pang of relief. There’s a safety here, somehow, without the constancy of being on the run—he and Kat are never able to stay in one ship, one planet, one system for long.

Strange that he ends up in his own quarters on the ship. There’s no sign of this universe’s him, even though he clearly exists. Gabriel spends a cautious hour winding his way around the Buran, but there isn’t another Lorca to pop out and expose him.

They must have swapped places. This should make him glad, that Kat isn’t alone, but he fears for his alternate self. Who knows what kind of man makes captain in this universe? But Kat—if anyone can protect his alternate self, she can.

Gabriel swallows back a wave of bile at the thought of this other Lorca pretending to be him, trying to fool Kat—but no one can fool someone as sharp and deadly as she.

There’s a war here, with the Klingons, started by a one Michael Burnham. His universe’s Michael almost died protecting Captain Georgiou. The Terran resistance is small, but they have good people on their side, recruiting more daily.

But being honorable in this world is difficult. He has to consider the nuance of each action, to act like he’s considering softer options. The Klingons are formidable, and he mourns every lost life against them, but the Federation will never win the war if they hold back.

He explodes the Buran, because he does know what Klingon torture is like. The scars on his back are proof of his capture by a band of Klingons, and he only survived by the skin of his teeth.

So he brings Michael Burnham on board: she doesn’t trust him. Some things never change, he thinks wryly, reaching for a fortune cookie. Preprinted fortunes are pointless, when all there is to do is to reach out and shape destiny.

Tilly is…a _surprise_ , because Captain Tilly is a rogue, who somehow managed to gain safe passage from the Terran Empire. Perhaps they underestimate her: Lorca knows better. She may avoid conflict, but that’s because she doesn’t need to fight. Captain Tilly didn’t become a captain from nepotism, or money, or anything else. She earned it with her steel trap of a mind, and so he’s suitably wary around Cadet Tilly. They are occasional allies in his verse. Gabriel hopes, that if she survives this war, that she’ll make it to the captain’s chair in this universe too. Burnham sure seems to encourage her that way, to mold her, and it always his universe’s Burnham who convinces Tilly to smuggle them a shipment of dilithium crystals in Terran Empire space. (“They never search your ship!” “This could be the time that they do, and you know I’d hate to betray your coordinates for safe passage.” “You’re selling to the Andorians?”)

It was a spore drive malfunction that landed his in this universe—the perils of using a transporter while slamming through the mycelial network, something he only attempted because of the Terran Empire being so close by. He doesn’t think too hard that his crew might be dead, that the _Discovery_ might have found its last stand to be a dead end.

Not everyone is the same. He and his Stamets were friends, but this one has no interest in doing so. No matter. He has Stamet’s mind, the scientific passion. This tardigrade is volatile, uncontrollable, and Gabriel doesn’t know enough of his universe’s spore drive to get it to work. He’s always been too busy dodging the trail of fire, hiding out in empty quadrants, begging for a moment of peace in Kat’s arm. He regrets that now, when he could finish the war and be done, go back to his universe, and leave this one to its more peaceful existence.

He knows what the crew whispers about him: that he murdered his crew, that he shouldn’t have survived, that the only reason he’s climbed so far is because of Kat, and the most painful one: that he simply doesn’t give a damn about them.

Getting captured by the Klingons is the mistake of a rookie but the potential for information is high, and he’s never minded killing enemies in his way. If there’s an Ash Tyler in his universe, they haven’t met, but he can’t be working for the Terran Empire. Someone with Tyler’s fighting abilities would surely be somewhere at the top of the Empire, swinging a phaser in one hand and a knife in the other. Gabriel doesn’t know if they’ll both survive—and a man needs to spill his secrets sometimes, even if he can’t share the big one. Tyler trusts him immediately, something rare and precious, and he makes a vow to protect this man the best he can. And if he makes it home? He knows who he’ll be looking up to recruit. Gabriel craves the casual touches Tyler is willing to accept, in a world where everyone sees him as too formidable to be human.

Admiral Cornwell is a surprise—he still is taken aback that any of them have official rankings, sometimes spooked by the parallels between Starfleet and the Terran Empire. It would be so easy for things to twist that direction, but he isn’t here to save this entire universe. There’s a fondness in her eyes, though, even as she picks apart at his dressings. Kissing her is easy; letting himself pretend she’s someone else is harder. The scar on her right bicep is missing, the one that he sewed up himself with shaking hands as she talked him through it. This Kat touches him with a reverence he hasn’t earned, and he’s never seen the Perseids except in photographs in textbooks talking about destroyed stars. But sharing a bottle of whiskey with Kat? A universal constant, though he suspects that his alternate self wasn’t in the wreckage of a ship, in the one remaining safe hub of oxygen, staring out a viewport hoping a rescue would come. And then, giving in to a goodbye fuck, if they were going to die out in space, they might as well not pretend.

The spore drive barely works in this universe, the tardigrade giving out after a few uses. Gabriel wishes he could drift out through the airlock and warp away to his universe, or maybe suffocate out there, seeing nothing but stars he half recognizes as he dies unmourned by anyone that truly knows him.

But giving up isn’t an option and he pushes the whole crew. Gabriel saves as many lives as he can, hoping for some sort of cosmic balancing act between the two universes, and the planets he’s had to watch the Terran Empire explode. No one escapes a war unscathed, and he uses any motivating chip he can to push the crew further and faster.

The toll on Stamets isn’t something he predicted, a further divergence in the worlds. Eugenics is legal under the Terran Empire, and though they’re loathe to use any DNA mutagenic technology, they do what they must. And Stamets is _fine_ , which is why Gabriel believes this Stamets when he says that he is too. He doesn’t know until it’s become too late, when the stakes are too high. Stamets is a man of conviction here as well, desperate to save others even though his own survival is precarious.

Gabriel asks for one hundred thirty three jumps. Each data point brings them closer to an ending to the war, and a return to how things are supposed to be. Kat is too suspicious to hang on much longer, and as the Ship of the Dead explodes, he thinks: _I’m coming home._

The deception takes a toll, and his eyes burn, even with the drops, but victory is so close that the pain is sweet. The man he’s had to become—the walls he’s had to maintain to keep his cover intact—is about to be no longer. Gabriel hits the override code in the navigation panel, after Stamets accepts a spore jump to retirement, and believes that he’s won the day.

The ship lurches, and shakes, and Gabriel doesn’t recognize these stars. He’s as lost as he was when he first landed in Federation space. These shimmering lights don’t contain his allies, but something unknown and uncertain. He isn’t home, and this crew that he has pushed to survive is at risk again.

It is the infinitesimal outcome of the decisions of a broken man.

**Author's Note:**

> if lorca is mirrorverse, i don't believe he's a high ranking terran empire official. he's far too good compared to what we've seen in mirrorverse episodes in other trek shows, so far.
> 
> rogue tilly, anyone? i love her.
> 
> sorry about the hand wavey science, but if trek can do it, so can i!
> 
> prayer emoji for s1 part 2 that is about to destroy us all, in less than a week!


End file.
